


Ashes

by solisaureus



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Doomed Timelines, F/M, Gen, M/M, Possession, The Future Past Timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-07 12:39:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7715233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solisaureus/pseuds/solisaureus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A multi-part exploration of the doomed timeline that Lucina came from with a focus on the characters of Robin and Lucina. Will also delve into the game's present timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The last thing Robin did was save him. When the exalt looked to him, his triumph was glowing through the mess of blood and sweat on his face like moonlight through the dark. He would not have seen the burst of dark magic that surged toward him from the fallen form of Robin's father. Robin bore the lethal attack in his place, shoving the intended target away to safety before collapsing to the floor. 

His chest felt like it was stuffed with cold metal, and each gasp he managed tasted of death. His vision weakened as the exalt's arms found themselves around him. Then, pressure. A retreat from himself, an invasion. Hands, maybe his, buzzing with electricity. Blood burning and sizzling into the air, a good man falling to his knees. 

Robin did not laugh, but the voice was his. He had only a heartbeat to understand what he'd done before he felt a heavy, bitter sharpness fill into the tips of his fingers, his eyes, singe the human from his skin. He caught a glimpse of the exalt spasming as he bled out onto the black stone. Then he was gone. 

\--

Robin was deceptively mild-natured when he first joined the Shepherds. After more than a decade of being held prisoner in Plegia castle by his father, his social skills were rusty. Many of the Shepherds were friendly toward him, nodding and saying hello whenever they came across the mysterious newcomer, but the only one Robin ever really spoke to was the exalt. 

Chrom was gentle and patient, often touching Robin's shoulder or forearm with rough but warm hands to reassure him. Robin soon discovered that he was the father of twins of twelve years, a boy and a girl. It seemed that this part of him was reflected even in his interactions with his soldiers and with Robin; he had the protective and encouraging demeanor of a proud parent. The queen was motherly in her own way as well, but where her husband would actively guide and inspire his soldiers, she would discreetly account for the army's inventory, or assist with dinner preparation, or lighten everyone's hearts with an impromptu yet dazzling fireside dance routine. 

During those first few weeks, Chrom would set aside time each day specifically to spend with the newest member of his army. People were uncertain of Robin, the taciturn and mysterious refugee from Plegia castle, but his foggy reputation did not deter their commander. Robin had been essential in helping them navigate an escape from the deadly trap that the sorcerer-king had set for the Shepherds, and that alone was enough to win the trust of Ylisse's ruler. 

"Are you certain you don't want a new cloak, Robin?" Chrom asked the newcomer in the privacy of his tent, where he'd come for his daily check-in. "If King Validar forced you to wear that one, I wouldn't want you to feel like you had to keep it. It's not like we have a shortage of clothing." 

Robin shook his head, strands of his dark hair sliding across each other on his shoulders. He picked at the golden threading on the wide cuffs of his sleeves. 

Chrom waved his gloved hand dismissively. "Alright, well, the offer stands if you change your mind. And, speaking of offers...have you given any thought to what I asked you about yesterday?"

Robin looked up from his sleeves, his dark eyes deep with thought, yet present and alert. While his deep brown complexion and long nose pointed to his Plegian heritage pretty clearly, Chrom was perplexed by Robin's eyes. Their narrow shape reminded him of people from Chon'sin that he'd met, like the champion swordsman that won Khan Basilio the right to rule Regna Ferox until the next tournament. He wondered if Robin might have had heritage from that part of the world as well, but he felt that he was not familiar enough with his new ally to ask. 

"You still want me to work for your army?" he said slowly, as though he was planning his words as he spoke them. 

Chrom nodded seriously. "Our current strategist is skilled, but I have never seen anyone work their circumstances like you did in Plegia. You almost single-handedly flipped our situation, and I would be remiss if I did not at least extend an invitation for the position to you." 

Robin looked back down. "Thank you," he said. "But I am a fugitive. If I stay with you, I will bait Validar until I am recaptured. Constant pursuit by the enemy is no way to repay one's rescue."

"Robin," Chrom said, placing that familiar hand on Robin's forearm. "You did not impose yourself on me. I chose to take you with us, and whatever happens as a result of that decision is my responsibility. If it were up to me, I would keep you safe myself before casting you away." He sat back and exhaled before adding, "but may Naga strike me down before I command a former prisoner where he must go. The choice is yours, friend."

Robin stared pensively at Chrom's hand, feeling the warmth emanating from it, even across the glove and sleeve. This man, this father, this king would protect him at his own expense. He would choose to be the comrade of someone he knew was Grimleal, let alone the intended receptacle of the fell dragon's reawakened soul. He saw value in his skills and actions. He had imparted the first wholly kind touch that Robin had felt in many years. 

He met the man's eyes and nodded. "I...would be honored to join you," he said. 

\--

Once he had made quick work of the exalt's immediate party, the dragon sought his followers to launch the organized extermination. The primary agenda would be the royal family of Ylisse; only when the exalted bloodline had run dry could the dragon proceed unhindered. 

The fallen exalt's wife and knight had narrowly escaped the massacre on the back of a pegasus, but not before the knight acted quickly and inflicted what would have been mortal wounds on the dragon's new vessel. He had made away with the divine blade during the brief paralysis of the dragon's fresh, unconditioned body. That sword would become a stubborn obstacle if it reached its new heir. The dragon's gaze fixed itself on Ylisstol. 

Though it hadn't killed him, Robin had been spared none of the pain when Frederick had thrust his lance through his heart. He'd always expected that Grima would have replaced his own soul in this one body. At least Validar had always made it seem that Grima's rebirth would be simultaneous with Robin's death whenever he spoke of his son's "great purpose." Yet here he still was, watching helplessly as his friends fell one by one at what were once his hands. As their former tactician, Robin was familiar with the usual spirit of his soldiers in battle. But against Grima their blows fell differently; their confidence, their righteous valor had dissipated, and instead they fought against waves of terror and grief. Perhaps they would have stood more of a chance if they hadn't been the first to face the fell dragon. 

Grima was commanding the Grimleal, making preparations for an assault on Ylisstol. The twin prince and princess flashed through Robin's mind; perhaps they did not yet know that their father had been betrayed in a fatal moment, about the inescapable danger they would soon find themselves in. 

The crumpled corpse of the exalt still laid face-up on the stone amongst the ruins that the rising dragon had made of Plegia castle, separate from the mass of dead soldiers that had tried to avenge their leader. Taking advantage of Grima's distraction with siege planning, Robin commanded himself to move toward the body. He stared down at Chrom's frozen face. At his pink Brand, smudged with soot and blood from his final struggle. At what would have been proud battle scars on his exposed skin to tell his children and grandchildren of. At the gaping wound in his chest, so bloodied that its edges, semi-cauterized from the penetrating electricity, were indiscernible. His once-bright eyes were still open, gazing blindly at the unnaturally dark sky above. 

The independent movement of his vessel had caught Grima's attention, though he'd allowed it. He snarled and roughly placed his boot on the body's side to kick it onto its front, but the motion wouldn't happen. His leg trembled above that wretched face as tears escaped his own eyes. 

"That worthless servant, Validar," the dragon growled. "It took so many generations to breed my vessel and he allowed it to sympathize with this pathetic Naga follower." 

The dragon ripped away Robin's weak control over his body, closed his misting eyes and forced the dead man away with a violent kick. Turning his back to it, he ordered a nearby Grimleal to bury the body and then returned his focus to the family the man had left behind.


	2. Chapter 2

Splinters of a wooden dummy leapt away from the impact of the steel practice blade as the princess swung at it for what felt like the hundredth time. The figure, freshly carved not a week hence, was now hardly recognizable as humanoid after the prolonged beating it had taken. The sword swings had long since fell into a rhythm: left cut, right cut, downward slash, left cut, right cut, upward slash. Back up, step forward, stab. The simple warmup pattern her father had taught her as soon as she was old enough to wield a blade. Back then, he'd showed her how to progress from these starting exercises to more advanced maneuvers, but today she couldn't focus enough to escape from her droning rhythm. 

"I think it's dead, Lucina," called the prince's sardonic voice from over the fence bordering the barracks' practice ring. He leaned forward on his elbows, pushing his cheeks up as he lazily weighed his head on his fists. "Seriously, how much longer are you going to keep at this? Let's go get you a nice, calming cup of tea, hm?" 

Lucina paused her rhythm to roll her eyes and turn to face her twin brother. "How can you be calm right now? I can't even stand still! Look at my hands, they're trembling!" she said, raising her left, sword-free hand for him to see. 

"For the love of Naga, quit worrying about our parents," Inigo said, unable to keep the frustration from his voice as he had repeated the same thing many times in the past few days. "Father has already fought and won two wars, and he's stronger for them. Plus he's got an army with him, not to mention that Plegian tactician he seems to have so much faith in."

Lucina sighed and wiped sweat from her brow. "That tactician is the reason I'm worried," she muttered, leaning on her sword.

"That's a little rude," scoffed the prince. 

"Don't be dense, Inigo!" said Lucina, shooting her brother an impatient look. "Don't tell me you didn't notice that the Grimleal started acting up as soon as Father came back with that prisoner."

"No, I didn't notice, because I was too busy enjoying my youth like us sixteen-year-olds are supposed to do to give that much thought to such unpleasant matters as the Grimleal," said Inigo, wiggling his fingers dramatically at the last word. Spooky Grimleal. 

Lucina groaned and stabbed her sword in his direction. "One of us is going to rule Ylisse someday," she said. "And with everything that's going on, who knows how close that day might be? We don't have the luxury of playing around every day like Cynthia or Brady or Owain."

Inigo's grin faltered at the cracking of his sister's voice. "C'mon, don't be so dark, Lucina," he pleaded. 

The princess began to raise her voice. "Father isn't out there fighting Gangrel or Walhart, alright?" she said desperately. "He's there because Plegia is trying to revive the damned fell dragon and he's the only one who can stop them! Do you get it? He's literally fighting a god of death, Inigo!" 

Inigo squinted for a moment, considering a counterpoint, but instead vaulted himself over the fence to approach his sister. He put a hand on her shoulder and said, "And beating that dummy to mulch isn't going to help him do anything. I'm sure Father and Mother will be back soon, so why don't we go and brew something nice to welcome them?" 

Lucina looked down at the steel in her hand for a moment, then let it clatter ungracefully to the dirt as she allowed Inigo to lead her back into the castle for tea. 

\--

"Back up, step forward, stab. Yes, just like that, Luci! That's my little girl, such a natural!" 

"Father, I'm not little! I'm twelve!" 

"Ah, of course, you're already a grown-up hero of the halidom. But Inigo is still little, right?" 

As though his ear was fine-tuned to catch the sound of ridicule, the young prince looked over from the conversation he was having with his mother across the fence and stuck his tongue out. Chrom laughed as the princess mocked her brother in turn. 

"Are you sure we're really twins, Father?" asked Lucina. "Inigo is such a baby sometimes."

Chrom patted his daughter's head, the height of which was rapidly catching up to his own. In his mind, he still pictured his children as barely coming up to his hip, but in reality they were both now nearly chest-height. "I watched you both come into the world at the same time from the same woman," he said fondly. "I remember it clearly as though it happened this morning." 

"I guess I'll have to take your word on that, Father, though personally I still don’t see it," Lucina said, smiling. "Now teach me how to fight so I can go up against you!" She playfully tapped the legendary blade sheathed, as it always was, at her father's hip. 

Chrom had been young when he'd wed Olivia, an enchanting Feroxi dancer that had joined the Shepherds at the insistence of Khan Basilio towards the end of the Ylisse-Plegia War over twelve years ago. At the age of nineteen he'd been unceremoniously thrown into the deep end of adulthood: forced through grief for his sister's assassination in their own home, a suffocating war that came to a messy halt with the death of King Gangrel at the end of Chrom's sword, his premature coronation, and what many whispers considered a hasty wedding. 

Despite the short time they’d known each other beforehand, Chrom had never regretted their union. Olivia handled being abruptly folded into the Ylissean royal family mostly with poise, and Chrom credited her occasional faux pas to her familiarity with with less-than-graceful Feroxi customs...or perhaps those were just Khan Basilio's customs. In time, the dancer's charm and caring nature won over most everybody who ever had doubts about her, and the newly crowned exalt was no exception. Chrom loved her, loved her shyness in front of new people but how her voice would bloom in private, loved how sharing a valuable thing made her enjoy it more, and eventually he loved the grace with which she transitioned to motherhood. She made parenting twins look simple. When Lucina and Inigo were born, Chrom felt almost like a child himself, but he found that parenthood came easier to him than anyone had anticipated. A big heart is the first and most important component of a good father, and it seemed that Chrom was born with one. 

Chrom smiled warmly at his daughter, who stood facing him, practice sword in hand. “Show me your ready stance,” he said, and she eagerly leapt into position, her feet spread wide and her knees bent with her sword held low in front of her. Her hair, deep blue like her father’s and wildly curly like her mother’s, was tied back neatly behind her golden tiara. She was so young, but seemed to Chrom already like a capable warrior princess. Perhaps it was the Brand manifested in her eye; she had to look through her bloodline before she saw the world.

He was in the midst of coaching Lucina when Frederick presented himself, claiming he had an announcement. Ylisse’s ally and former Shepherd Lord Virion of Rosanne and his vassal, Cherche, had come to Ylisstol with urgent news. 

The exalt apologized to Lucina for cutting her training session short, once again patting the top of her head. He did the same to Inigo and exchanged a kiss with the queen before following Frederick back into the palace. 

\-- 

Before Inigo could say a word about tea inside the palace, a servant urgently approached the prince and princess and ushered them into the reception hall. There stood Frederick looking downright haggard, a word which nobody had ever before used to describe the meticulously dutiful knight. In front of him, Olivia sat in a chair that a servant had brought into the hall for her because she was unable to keep herself upright. Her eyes were rimmed bright red, her long, rosy hair looking limp and singed in some places. In her lap laid Falchion, unsheathed, her fingers wrapped around the hilt like she was hanging onto it for dear life. 

Their aunt Lissa entered the room shortly after the twins, and immediately upon seeing the sword without its owner, her hands flew to her mouth and she crumpled to her knees, howling. Behind her, her teenaged son Owain leaned down to rub circles in her trembling back as she sobbed like no one had heard her since the assassination of Exalt Emmeryn when Lissa was fifteen. Not even two years prior, when her husband had been struck with a Grimleal’s arrow that was meant for Owain and died despite Lissa’s own efforts at healing him, had she succumbed to such violent grief. 

Lucina stared hollowly as the knight gently removed Falchion from Olivia’s grasp and, taking a knee, offered the divine sword to the blue-haired girl. “Princess Lucina,” Frederick said in an unnaturally weak voice, his head bowed. “It is under the most painful of circumstances that I must pass this blade to you, its next capable wielder.” 

Lucina felt her brother’s comforting hand on her shoulder as she reached for the sword’s hilt. Taking a shaky, steadying breath, she slowly raised the glowing blade up to her left eye and looked at her broken family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First look at Lucina's perspective! ngl writing this made my heart hurt


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> shit hits the fan 
> 
> (content warning for body horror and Graphic Depictions Of Violence for this chapter)

Ylisstol appeared uncharacteristically dim as Grima approached the city with his followers in tow. Granted that it was late in the day, but even at night Ylisse’s capitol city was known to be vibrant and busy. Tonight, however, the streets were vacant, doors closed, even windows shuttered and candles extinguished. Grima caught sight of the Ylissean flag near the palace, raised half-mast and hanging limply in the lack of a breeze. 

It was almost pitiful how these humans thought they had time to mourn the death of one man. 

Within the palace walls, the royal family anticipated the hunt. Grima reached into his vessel's memories for their identities - there were the Exalt's twin children, whom Robin had never met, so Grima would have to do some guesswork in silencing those two; his wife, a woman with an unmistakable pink tint to her curly hair; his sister, the surviving one, a younger woman of short stature and long blonde hair that refused to lay flat; and his nephew, a young man whose face was similarly unknown to the vessel. None really stood out as a challenge.

 _Short work, surely,_ Grima thought. He would pull off a swift, brutal execution not unlike that of the Exalt before Chrom; the one order that Validar had carried out seamlessly. Naga's line would bleed out this night. Grima would see the end of the Exalts and damn himself if he ever saw that Brand on human skin again. 

Grima would waste no time crushing every ounce of human resistance if he could, but that would imply his own self-destruction. The soul of his vessel stoutly refused to tarnish, despite the occupation of a much greater being in his body. The dragon felt his presence fighting every motion he made, constantly dragging him backwards and screaming in resistance to his actions. He caused more than a minor headache, and Grima hated him despite his divine place above such petty human emotions. Grima had even briefly reviving Validar, the useless rat, just to immolate him himself in order to unequivocally illustrate his contempt for the man’s failure, but he didn't have time to spare. These moments were key; if he wasn't prompt with the elimination of Naga's servants they were sure to become a much bigger issue later. 

The Grimleal closed in on the castle, where dozens of armored guards waited with spears pointed outwards. Grima allowed some of his followers to be slain by the knights in a brief show of a battle before he raised his left arm, calling forth three-meter-high spikes from the earth to skewer the guards and Grimleal alike. With the way now clear, the fell dragon crossed the path of human corpses and entered Naga's hallowed halls.

"Halt."

More squadrons of knights stood in the way of the great hall, fronted by the man Grima recognised as the one who'd stabbed his vessel and stolen Falchion from the Exalt's cold grasp. As a unit, they shone like the scales of a fish in shallow water, despite the lack of light in their surroundings. There were even cavalry present behind them, mounted soldiers armed with staves and bows. The great knight leading them approached Grima on his horse as the intruder continued to stride inward with more servants tailing him, despite witnessing the offhanded slaughter of their companions. 

"Move, or you will be moved," Grima commanded, even though he fully intended to dispatch them all, regardless of their obedience. 

"How dare you come here," the knight said, stalwart in his position. 

"Did you expect me to work around you?" said the dragon. It wasn’t as though Naga was going to exert herself to protect them from the fell dragon reincarnated. 

"Before I put you down, again, pray tell me one thing, Robin," the man asked sternly. 

Robin? Don't these humans know a god when he's standing before them? 

_He is addressing me, you prick. Did you forget whose body you stole?_

"Silence," Grima said coldly to both of the insects pestering him.

Frederick narrowed his eyes and frowned. "Did you always plan this? From the moment my lord extended his hand to you?" 

_No, never, never._

"It's the reason I was born," the dragon said plainly, and the knight's face twisted with hatred.

_Damn you._

"Then I have nothing more to say to you. Raise your sword."

Grima scoffed and raised his arm again to eradicate the obstinate squadron with one move. But Frederick surprised him, moving faster than his heavy size suggested possible, and a hatchet came flying from his hand and sliced Grima's arm clean off at the elbow. In his mind, Robin shrieked in pain as the useless limb dropped to the tiled floor and the stump spilled mortal blood onto the tactician's robes that the body still wore. Despite the agonized racket in his head, Grima looked calmly from the displaced segment to the offending attacker, who had already drawn another weapon and looked ready to fight for his life. Locking his gaze to the knight's, Grima groaned slightly as the limb rapidly regenerated itself from the bloody stump, accompanied by the grotesque cracking of growing bones and the slicking sounds of flesh slithering around them. 

"Naga's breath," gasped a staggering footsoldier from behind Frederick. "He's not human."

Grima glared daggers at the speaker. "Watch your language," he said, and with a flick of his freshly regrown wrist he sent the knight flying into the ceiling. At the command of their leader, the squadron rushed forth, blades drawn, to meet the attacking army in battle. The hall was filled suddenly with the cacophony of clamoring hooves, battle rallies, pained cries, the clanging of steel and the drumming of bodies hitting the ground. Frederick rode forward, wordlessly claiming Grima as his opponent alone, and the dragon flashed his teeth in acceptance of the man's little challenge. 

Now that Grima had more control over his vessel, it was laughably easy to dodge the knight's attacks. Perhaps Frederick had been deceived by how simple it was to land a fatal hit on the dragon's body so shortly after his awakening. But with the god's millennia of battle now comfortably transferred into his vessel's reflexes, the duel had become pathetically one-sided. Still, it didn't seem in the knight's character to forfeit for any reason short of death. It was time to stop playing. 

Ducking below the swipe of Frederick's battle axe, Grima reached up and crashed his knuckles into the knight's center, dislodging him from his steed with a strike far more forceful than the mortal vessel could have generated on his own. Frederick grunted as he rose from his knees and prepared his weapon for another attack, but Grima was faster, launching a kick to his chest that both knocked the breath out of his opponent and forced him back to the ground. 

"Captain!" called an Ylissean soldier, rushing to help upon seeing his leader in a downhill struggle.

"Vaike, don't--!" Frederick began, but Grima flicked the man across the hall, and his head cracked against a pillar. He turned back to the knight below him and placed a boot on his chest to immobilize him. 

"Let's get to the point," Grima said coyly, pushing more force through his lower leg and relishing in the clean splitting sound of the knight's armor. "Where are the rest of Naga's servants?" 

"What have you done to Robin?" Frederick gasped, and the dragon stepped harder on his body, eliciting a pained groan as ribs buckled under the pressure. He wrapped his hands around Grima's leg to try to pull it away, but his strength was far insufficient to budge it. 

"Answer me, mortal. Where is the sword? The emblem? Where are the children and the women? I will find them if you don't speak, but if you make this easy for me perhaps I will make their deaths easy for them."

"They're not...here," Frederick managed through pained breaths. 

"Lying will save nobody."

"See...for yourself. We knew Grima would come."

Grima sniffed and contemplated the knight's suggestion. "Very well. I will search these grounds and kill every human in the way. Know, mortal, that if you lied to me about your masters' absence that their blood will be on your hands." Finally, he stepped off of Frederick's chest and the man wheezed in pain as Grima turned away. 

"Let...let Robin go," he begged the retreating dragon as he struggled to sit back up.

Grima paused and turned his head. "If only I could," he said before drawing his vessel's blade and sinking it straight through the knight's chest, silencing his heartbeat. Harrowed wailing rang deafeningly in the fell dragon's head as he retrieved the sword and flicked the blood off the tip. Robin's bereaved screaming turned into accusatory hatred as Grima stepped over the dying body and turned away from the ongoing battle in the hall to search for his real prey. 

\--

Robin wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and raised his sword once more. Frederick stood before him, wearing light armor for a change, seeming positively placid in comparison to Robin's overexertion. "Come at me again," said the knight. 

Robin steeled his gaze and lunged at him with his blade, and Frederick effortlessly dodged him. He swung his sword back up in a slanted arc, but his target spun around and sidestepped the attack. As Robin thrust his arm out again, Frederick caught his wrist and twisted it so that he lost his grip on the hilt and let the blade fall to the ground. 

"That was better, but you're still not using your feet enough," Frederick said, releasing the smaller man's arm. "Focus on your position more, Robin. Again."

"No, I need to breathe for a moment," said Robin as he flopped onto a bench in the barracks beside his discarded coat and cropped jacket. He tied his hair up at the back of his head with a piece of string and fanned his bare neck with his hand. "Let Henry take a turn for once."

Frederick turned to the white-haired mage seated comfortably behind him and quirked an inquisitive eyebrow. Henry laughed and waved his hand dismissively. "I'm just here to watch in case someone gets hurt," he said. "I'm perfectly comfortable with just my magic." 

"Magic has its weaknesses, Henry," said Frederick. "It's not that Robin isn't remarkably capable with a tome, but swordsmanship is a reliable skill that would behoove every soldier to have. You could stand to learn from his example."

"I'm sure there is much I could learn from our honorable tactician," Henry said with a smile. "But if you two are going to pressure me into playing with sharp objects outside of my free time, then allow me to take my leave." Frederick frowned, but dismissed him with a sigh. 

"Give it up, Frederick," Robin said after Henry bowed out of the barracks. "There's no point in trying to convince all the Shepherds to take up a sword."

"Yes, I'm afraid I must agree that you are a special case in your willingness to learn," Frederick said, gingerly replacing his practice sword in the exact spot on the rack he'd taken it from earlier. 

Frederick flattered him in painting Robin's swordplay lessons as a noble effort to better himself as a soldier, but if Robin was honest with himself, his motivations were much shallower. The truth was that he thought swordsmen looked rather dashing on the battlefield, and he wouldn't mind commanding the swagger that a full scabbard fastened to his hip would lend him. Mages were admirable enough, twisting and fluttering gracefully in command of the arcane arts, but there was something irreproducibly valorous about felling enemies with cold steel. 

He couldn’t lie to himself, either, that there was one swordsman in particular that always caught his eye. 

"Frederick?" Robin said. 

"Hmm?"

"Did you teach Chrom how to wield a sword, too? When he was young, I mean." He hoped that his curiosity seemed natural enough. 

Frederick's face bloomed in one of his rare fond smiles. "Yes, I was accessory to milord's lessons in combat after the death of his father, the Exalt, when milord was six years old."

Robin's cheeks warmed, slightly embarrassed to bring up such a topic. "Oh," he said awkwardly.

"It's alright, Robin. It was a long time ago, and milord handled it rather well for his age at the time, if I may say so." 

"I suppose I would handle it well now if my father were to pass away suddenly," Robin mused. Frederick eyed him, his expression unreadable. "Is that a strange thing to say?" Robin added, shifting under his gaze. 

Frederick shook his head. "It would not be my place to judge your sentiments towards Validar. What that man put you through is unspeakable."

Robin nodded quietly. He couldn't help but feel that his Ylissean companions weren't quite comfortable with his past, even two years after he'd joined them. To be fair, he was technically the prince of an enemy nation and the son of a threatening cult leader. Still, he'd never seen himself as either; he had grown up in a remote area of Ylisse with his mother, who had taught him the customs of her homeland, Chon'sin, rather than Plegian ones. The years that Robin had spent in Plegia were as a prisoner, and he'd only ever known his father as his captor. 

Frederick looked at his friend and sat beside him on the bench, as though he could sense the drop in the man's mood. "If I may say so, Robin, we are all happy to have you with us. No one has ever said an unkind word about you."

Robin chuckled quietly. "Chrom would probably have their head for slander," he said.

"It's true, he is quite fond of you," Frederick commented. 

_Don't say such things,_ Robin thought. "He is very kind. Ylisse is fortunate to have such a warm-hearted leader." 

"She is similarly fortunate to have discovered such a brilliant tactician."

"Alright, now you're just buttering me up. Shall I tell your wife that you're trying to woo another man?" Robin said with a wry smile.

Frederick mocked offense. "Remind me to never pay you a compliment ever again," he said.

Robin laughed and dusted his knees as he stood. "Let's get back to work. Maybe knocking me flat on my rear another twenty times will put my ego back in its place." 

Frederick was retrieving the practice swords from their rack when Lissa rushed in, Mend staff in hand, looking one crisis short of panicked. "Milady," Frederick said, bowing to her.

"Hi Freddy, hello Robin!" said Lissa, giving a hurried little wave to each of them. "Have you seen my idiot brother anywhere?" 

Robin laughed heartily at her phrasing. "Is he running from you?" he said through his smile.

Lissa groaned. "I _know_ he's hiding an injury because he doesn't want anyone to find out he got mauled by 'The Vaike' in another one of their ridiculous fights," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm at the offender's title. "Honestly, you wouldn't think they're grown men from the way they're always bopping each other on the head for no reason! But if he's too proud to tell Libra or Mari, the least he could do is tell his darned sister when he needs healing!"

Robin's inability to contain his amusement only frustrated the princess further, but Frederick returned their practice swords to their places once again and said, "I will retrieve the Exalt at once, milady," before nodding to Robin and excusing himself to search for his evasive lord. Lissa rolled her eyes at Robin and then hurried out after the knight. 

\--

It was quiet in the great hall. The fighting had ceased once the fell dragon became annoyed by it and turned the polished tile floor into a pit of deadly thorns that impaled everyone standing on it. He even bothered to personally extinguish the pained groaning of the errant soldier clinging to life. If he couldn't have silence inside his head, he would at least have it in his surroundings. 

Like a blood-drunk shark unsatisfied by its recent kill, Grima turned his attention to sniffing out the exalts hiding in the castle. He searched through empty halls and forced down doors to empty chambers for an infuriatingly long passage of time until he heard the clicking of a noblewoman's dignified step behind him. When he turned, he saw a woman with blonde hair, but it was too neat to match the vessel's memory of the princess. She had a tome in hand and a murderous look in her eyes. 

"I don't know what happened to you, Robin, but you will not lay a hand on my treasure," she said, her high-pitched voice cold as ice. 

"You are not of Naga's bloodline," Grima seethed. "Get out of my way." 

Maribelle cracked open her tome and her hand fluttered over the glowing sigils. "I promise, this will hurt," she said, and Robin couldn't blame her when she struck him square in the chest with an exceedingly charged Thoron bolt. Grima actually shouted in pain; magic burned the dragon more than steel. Before she could shift to defense, Maribelle received the brunt of Grima's frustration in the form of the pommel of Robin's sword being shoved forcefully into her sternum. She grunted and fell to the floor, struggling to breathe, before the dragon sent a spike from the floor through her torso and stormed off in search of the princess that he was now certain was within his reach.

He found her on her knees, cowering in a dark room at the back of the castle. She looked up with wet eyes when Grima opened the door, and awe crossed her face.

"Robin?" she said in a quivering voice. "You're alive. Frederick - Frederick said -"

"Frederick did not kill me," Grima confirmed, playing along for the time being.

"Thank Naga you're here," she breathed, shakily getting to her feet and placing a trembling hand on his forearm. "I'm so afraid. Maribelle left some time ago to check on the guards, and she hasn't come back...Robin, I'm afraid that - that...what if..." Her sentence failed as she began to sob.

 _Leave her alone, please,_ Robin pleaded, knowing how futile it was. 

Lissa looked up suddenly and withdrew her hand as quickly as though Grima's skin had burned her. "You killed Chrom," she accused.

Grima could only smile.

"You killed my brother!" her voice steadied itself as its volume rose, and she backed away. "You said you would die for him!" 

Robin's sorrow overwhelmed Grima's control, and tears began to fall from his corrupted eyes. Lissa screamed curses at him and lunged for her Bolganone tome, but Grima struck out like a snake and grasped her throat. 

"I wish that he had," Grima said in a low hiss as he pinned her against the wall by the neck. "It would've spared this poor god more than a few headaches."

Lissa's eyes widened in sudden horrified understanding. "Grima," she whispered.

"Finally," the dragon said, and made the motion to crush her windpipe, but his hand wouldn't contract. An irritated roar ripped from his throat as hot tears continued to race down his face, and his arm shook with the effort to smother the damned vessel's will. "You can't save anyone, wretch! This body belongs to me!" he shouted, and forcefully tore away Robin's persistent hold. His fist snapped closed and the princess's neck cracked loudly. He let the body crumple to the floor and swiftly fled the palace with a hotly rekindled determination to finish what he’d set out to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this in 8 straight hours and i am so sad.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Ylisstol falls to Grima, the royal children and the queen find themselves having to fight for their lives.

Lucina watched the dusky landscape rolling past the window of the carriage as it sped along the road toward the west edge of Ylisse, where the royal family’s safe house lay tucked among the nondescript hills. Falchion clinked occasionally in its scabbard at her hip when the wheels caught a bump, and the sound only aggravated Lucina’s heightened nerves. For years she had dreamed of owning the legendary blade, but never imagined it would fall to her so soon. Carrying it now was a constant reminder not only of the danger she faced but also of the guidance she would not have. She kept finding herself wishing that she could at least have known that her father’s death was coming; his unexpected murder felt like the rug being ripped out from under her feet. The last time she saw him he was healthy, optimistic, unconquerable. Now he was dead, and there had been no period in between. 

He was dead. Chrom, her father, the Exalt of Ylisse and Naga’s chosen hero, was dead. She forced herself to say it in her head, even if she still didn’t have the strength to say it out loud. 

Inigo and their mother were leaning on each other in the seats across from Lucina, asleep. Beside her, her cousin Owain was uncharacteristically quiet. A book lay open on his lap, but he was staring out the other window with his nails between his teeth. He had barely said a word since they left Ylisstol, when normally Lucina dreaded making long trips in enclosed spaces with Owain since he was inclined to chatter incessantly. 

“Are you thinking of your mother?” Lucina asked in a low voice, nudging him gently.

Owain furrowed his brow and nodded, still not looking away from the window. “I wish she had come with us.” 

The Exalt could not leave Ylisstol in a time of crisis, Lissa had reasoned. The people were afraid and their leader had to inspire hope. Abandoning them now would seem like giving in to terror. She may be frightened but that was all the more reason to have courage. It’s what Emmeryn would have done. It’s what Chrom would have done. 

Lucina tried to have faith in her Aunt, reminding herself that she was no stranger to battle and that she had the entire castle guard led by Frederick to protect her, but a persistent corner of her mind was still frightened for her. After what had happened to her father, she was hesitant to have blind faith in anyone’s safety, no matter how strong she knew them to be. But when she looked at Owain she felt she could almost reach out and grab the anxious tension surrounding him and her heart sank. She put on a reassuring smile and patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry. She’s going to be fine, and we’ll see her again soon enough.” 

Owain looked at her to return her smile halfheartedly, and then gave his attention back to the window. 

The carriage suddenly shook side to side, as if the horses pulling it were thrashing wildly. Olivia and Inigo were jolted awake, and Olivia burst out of the carriage with her sword drawn. Inigo peered after her curiously, half frightened of what had just happened and half interested if he would get to watch his mother’s swordplay. He’d never gotten the chance to see it himself, but he’d heard valorous tales of her expertise on the battlefield...always from her comrades though; the day that Olivia bragged of her own skills would be the day the stars fell from the sky. 

The rattling of the carriage smoothed and Olivia’s face popped back into the open side door. “Everyone stay calm, but...the driver’s been shot.” 

Inigo’s heart stopped and Lucina gasped. “Is he dead?” Inigo asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

Olivia sighed and nodded. “And I don’t see any sign of our Pegasus Knight escort...they may have been stealthily engaged earlier without us noticing. I’m going to scout the area to root out the assassin.” She put a warm hand on her daughter’s shoulder and looked at her seriously. “Lucina, dear, you have the only other weapon so I need you to stay here and protect the boys in case anyone comes. Can you do that?” 

Lucina’s heart pounded but she reached for the hilt of Falchion and wrapped her fingers tightly around it. “I can do it. Be careful, mother.” 

“I’ll be right back,” Olivia promised before lowering the curtain on the window of the carriage. She gave one more reassuring smile and then headed down the road. The kids poked their heads out of the carriage and watched as she broke into a jog, her intricately forged sword, not quite legendary but certainly fit for a queen, in hand. 

For several tense minutes the three of them sat in silence, none of them daring to voice the fear they were all thinking about. How long before they could determine that she wasn't coming back? What would they do if something happened to her? Lucina supposed they could drive the carriage the rest of the way to the safe house, but as two unarmed teenagers and a mere swordsman-in-training they would be easy prey for Grima and his agents. Olivia seemed to have confidence in her daughter’s combat aptitude but Lucina’s gut told her that that sentiment came from a place of desperation rather than sincerity. Lucina accepted the responsibility not because she felt like she could handle it, but because she knew she had no other choice. 

She prayed that her mother would come back. 

Inigo looked across at his sister and a part of him wished that she would stop jiggling her knees and tugging at strands of her long hair, but he shamed that part into silence. It was incredible that she wasn't more anxious, and even if she was, she had plenty of cause to worry. Their father had just been betrayed and murdered, they had been driven from their home, and the violent extermination of life on the planet might very well be near at hand. There was no right way to respond to the last twenty-four hours. He glanced at the sword in Lucina’s scabbard and remembered how she had always trained with their father every chance she got for the past four years. Lucina was strong and capable. Inigo knew Olivia would be back soon, but it was reassuring that he wasn’t completely defenseless in the meantime. 

He glanced at Owain, who was struggling to distract himself with his book, and was about to ask him what it was about when something large and heavy slammed into the side of the carriage. The force of the impact tilted the entire structure to the side, but it managed to remain upright. All three of the occupants looked up and stared wide-eyed at the curtained window, holding their breath and hearing each other’s hearts pounding in their chests. For a tense few seconds, nothing happened. 

Then a battle axe smashed through the window, spraying broken glass into the interior, a sizable shard of which was flung deep into Owain’s left shoulder. He shrieked and put a hand to his bleeding wound and Lucina jumped deftly out the other door while Inigo pulled his cousin away from the broken window. 

Lucina sprinted around the side of the carriage and before she even saw the attacker, she could smell him. His strong odor dragged up the memory of the time Lucina found a dead rabbit hidden behind crates and racks in the shed of the training ring when she was eight. The unfortunate creature had been maggot-ridden and its exposed, greenish flesh oozed with a slime that had made Lucina’s stomach turn. When she got a good look at this axeman she saw that his eyes were sallow and deflated-looking, and his lower jaw was missing completely. She had nearly frozen with horrified shock but the sound of Owain’s pained wailing snapped her into action and she easily punched her sword straight through the attacker’s chest as he reared up for another swing. 

The creature swung his axe down hard on the carriage, apparently unaffected by Lucina’s strike. As Inigo’s panicked screaming joined in with Owain’s, Lucina realized that another blow would split the door apart and expose the two of them. With a determined shout, Lucina leapt upward and sliced off the attacker’s mutilated head in a special maneuver her father had taught her only a few months ago. 

She issued a prayer of thanks to Naga when the axe fell to the ground and the body crumpled, defeated. She knelt down to inspect the gruesome corpse, hoping to determine why she seemed to have just delivered its second death. 

Inigo gasped and shouted, “Lucina, look out!”

The princess stood up but she was not fast enough to dodge the crude swing of another creature’s blade; the point caught her hip as she turned around. Lucina stumbled and cried out, but quickly gathered her senses and raised her sword to defend herself. The creature’s heavy blade was bearing down on her relentlessly; she struggled to keep up with blocking swing after swing, grunting against the force of each attack. There were no openings between defending blows where Lucina could force in a counter, and between her injury and her creeping fatigue she feared that she wouldn’t be able to keep this up much longer.

Suddenly, a slender, gleaming blade swiped through the attacker’s neck from behind, quickly and smoothly felling it. The creature crumpled to its knees and Lucina saw her savior wiping her sword in the grass.

“Mother!” she cried, running to her with a limp from her wounded hip. Olivia wrapped her arms around her as though they’d just been reunited after years apart. 

When they parted, Olivia looked down at the dark bloodstain spreading across Lucina’s waistband and gasped. “Lucina, you’re hurt!” 

“Yes, but it can wait. Owain was injured too and I suspect he’s worse off than I am,” Lucina said, looking away as the carriage door creaked open and the boys cautiously came outside. Inigo was shouldering an pale looking Owain, who held a white-knuckled hand to his maimed shoulder.

Olivia gasped and released her daughter. “What happened?” she said, her hands flitting over Owain’s wound, which was now thoroughly coated in still-wet blood.

Owain straightened up a little and tried to look brave through his frightened tears. “He valiantly took what would have been a killing blow for his beloved cousins, but what was a mere flesh wound for such an impenetrable warrior as he!”

Olivia smiled at him, but Inigo rolled his eyes. “Some disgusting monster broke the window with an axe and it sliced Owain, but Luce got out and killed it,” he said. He was proud and relieved that Lucina had acted fast back there. He knew he was safe with his sister.

“You took down an assassin, Lucina?” Olivia asked, putting her hand on the girl’s back, and Lucina nodded. “That was very brave, protecting your family alone. I’m proud of you.” She paused and added, “Your father would be too.”

Lucina didn’t know how to respond. She wordlessly sheathed Falchion. 

The queen had Owain lay down in the grass so that she could safely remove the shard of glass from his arm. The twins each squeezed one of his hands, and Lucina placed a cool hand on his clammy forehead while he flinched in preparation. He yelped when Olivia pulled out the glass but he managed to keep his pain under control while she dressed the wound with the limited medical supplies they had. 

“We’ll have to get you two to a healer as soon as possible,” Olivia said once Owain was sitting up. “I think we’ll need to stop in the nearest town and see if anyone can help us.” 

“Mother...what were those things that attacked us?” Inigo asked almost timidly. “Did you see any others down the road?”

Olivia shook her head, her long hair brushing her shoulders. “I shouldn’t have left you, I think it was a trap to get you kids alone. Thank Naga I made it back just in time,” she added with a twitch of her eyebrows, as if she dreaded the thought of what would have passed if she had come only a few minutes later. 

“The men I fought…” Lucina said, staring at the decapitated bodies at their feet. They looked like they’d been lying dead at the side of the road for weeks, not a few minutes. “What happened to them?” 

Olivia bit her lips and frowned. “I don’t know, honey.”

“They’re probably servants of Grima, risen from the dead masses,” said Owain simply, as if he was stating the obvious. The others all turned and looked at him with questions in their eyes. “What? It would be the most efficient army for a god of death and destruction. This way he doesn’t have to keep any humans alive to fight for him. Plus it has the added bonus of striking fear into the hearts of Grima-fearing victims before they succumb to bloodcurdling terror and join the ranks of the dead.”

Inigo blinked and a smirk grew on his face. “Of course. Obviously. How characteristically logical of you, Owain.”

“Give it a rest, wise guy. Do you have a better explanation?” Owain retorted. 

“No, no, I’m clueless. How could I hope to outdo such a soundproof theory?” 

“I see you’re making fun of me and I refuse to rise to your taunts, you low-born knave.” 

“Low-born? That seems like a stretch even for you.”

“Boys,” Olivia said as though she were trying to calm their squabble, but her gaze as well as Lucina’s were set far beyond them. Next to her, Lucina silently drew Falchion back out from its scabbard. 

“Nobility is a performance as much as it is a birthright,” Owain explained to his smugly grinning cousin. “And inheritance can’t carry you all the way.”

“I suppose you’d know a lot about noble performances,” countered Inigo.

“Boys!” Olivia said more sharply, grabbing the two of them by the shoulders.

“What is it?” Inigo said, at the same time that Owain said, “Sorry, Aunt Olivia.” They followed her gaze toward the horizon and their petty animosity was quickly knocked away by a much colder and darker feeling. They shrank against the queen and icy dread filled their stomachs.

Marching towards them in the distance, encroaching slowly but steadily, was a legion of hundreds of Risen monsters. 

\--

Inigo sniffled as he raised his teacup to his lips. It was chamomile, and its subtle, warm flavor soothed his nerves as he sipped it. His other hand was bunched in the skirt he wore and he rubbed the velvet anxiously between his fingers. Across from him his mother’s eyelashes brushed her cheeks as she looked down to stir honey into her sweet rose hips brew. Her hair, the color of blush, was curled into an elegant braided updo that exposed her slender neck. He was wearing his own hair in the French braid it was always in, which was the main way that most people differentiated him from his twin sister and her usual loose, flowing locks. 

Songbirds chirped in the branches of the blooming wisteria trees dotted throughout the royal garden. Stray petals, pink and lavender and yellow, fluttered serenely through the mild breeze and dusted the glass table and the polished white marble floor. Olivia’s teacup clinked softly as she set it down and smiled at Inigo across the table. “Do you want to talk about it, sweetheart?” 

Inigo wiped his teary face roughly with his sleeve and sunk a little lower in his seat. “Mom...am I different from the other kids?” he said timidly.

Olivia’s heart melted and she reached a hand to Inigo’s little arm. “Oh honey, people treat you a little differently because you are the Exalt’s daughter, but it doesn’t mean they like you any less.”

“No, I don’t mean that.” Inigo couldn’t meet his mother’s eyes. “I just feel like...like my friends don’t see me the way I want them to see me.”

“How do you want them to see you?”

Inigo hesitated and fiddled with his hands, carefully picking out his words. “More like...the way I see myself, I guess. My friends’ parents always say I’m so much like Luce, or you, or Aunt Lissa, or even Aunt Emmeryn...but they never tell me I remind them of Dad. And I think I want them to see me as...more like that.” 

These sentiments conjured up past days when Olivia’s child had come to her in tears. He had always been more anxious around his peers than Lucina, shyer and less sure of himself. It was easier for him to feel insecure based on others’ thoughts of him, and every time he compared himself to them he never seemed to reach any positive conclusions. In a recent episode, Inigo had come to his mother with fears of the ominous near future: a friend of the twins’, a girl about their age, had excitedly shared the news that she had “become a woman.” Inigo was nearly in hysterics over the prospect of himself reaching a point in his life when he became one too, like menstruating marked the barrier when he would become a version of himself that he was afraid of and he could never turn back. After that incident Olivia had wondered if she would be hearing her child express feelings like he was now. 

“Do you feel like you’re a boy?” she asked, trying to sound unassuming. 

Inigo’s eyes snapped up suddenly as if he hadn’t even considered the possibility before. “I...maybe? I think -- I think so. Do other people feel like that?” 

“Some people do, honey. It’s okay if you do too. Dad and I will love you no matter what; boy or girl or anything else, you’ll always be our baby.” 

Tears renewed themselves in Inigo’s eyes and he sniffled in a futile effort to keep them back. He burst up from his seat and buried himself in his mother’s arms; her shimmering robes smelled of vanilla and lavender and the scent calmed him. Olivia smoothed his blue curls with her hand and held him close. 

“Mom?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Do you remember when -- when Dad told us you guys had other names that you would have given Lucina and me if we came out boys?”

“Mm-hmm,” Olivia hummed.

“Do you think you could...try calling me Inigo for a little while?”

Olivia squeezed her arms tightly around her son. “Of course, honey. I’ve always loved that name, and it suits you beautifully.” She planted a kiss on the top of his head. 

When she finally let go of him and he sat back down to his tea, a memory popped into Olivia’s head. It was advice that a friend had lent her many years ago, before she was a queen, back when she was a battlefield dancer in the Ylisse-Plegia war. “Do you know what the secret is for how boys build their confidence?” she asked him.

Inigo looked up like a curious bird. “What is it?”

“They practice talking to girls,” Olivia said with a smile. 

Inigo snorted. “But I’m talking to you right now, and you’re a girl. I talk to Lucina a lot, and she’s a girl. And I’m still shy around everyone else.”

Olivia shook her head sagely. “Lucy and I are your family, we don’t count as girls. Have you tried talking to a girl like...Severa?”

“I’m a little scared of Severa,” Inigo admitted, shivering. The redheaded ten-year-old and her sharp tongue were responsible for his tears most days. 

“Ooh, then perhaps start with someone less intimidating,” Olivia said through light giggles. “Cynthia is nice, right? She’s always asking to play with you. Or that sweet quiet girl, Noire?” 

“Hmm...I guess I could try,” Inigo contemplated. 

“That’s my boy,” Olivia said, and Inigo smiled into his tea. A cool breeze blew through their hair and swirled the colorful petals on the floor in an elegant dance. 

\--

Soldiers bustled around the Longfort, buzzing around Inigo like flies. The air was freezing cold but the young prince was numb to its bite as he stared blindly at the ring clutched in his hands. He was sitting near a pile of supply crates by himself; Lucina and Owain were being tended to by Feroxi clerics and the others were getting ready to sleep. He was in no hurry to follow them, as he didn’t know how he could sleep tonight for a moment.

It had been a little under an hour since they had flown into Regna Ferox. Upon their arrival, Lady Sumia and Lady Cherche were immediately summoned to meet with the Khans and Inigo hadn’t seen them since. 

He shouldn’t be here. He hated that he was here with this ring. He felt that the world he knew was filling up with water and he had been keeping his head above it, but now he was an inch from sinking. This was happening too fast. He had just lost his father days ago, his mother should still be here beside him. They couldn’t be taken away from him one right after the other.

There had been no pinpoint moment at which Inigo knew that they couldn’t all escape alive. The four of them had taken down dozens of Risen before Lady Cherche and Lady Sumia even showed up to help them, and he had only felt more confident with the addition of their legendary strength. He had still felt full of vigor, like he could fight an army by himself, when Olivia had decided that they should evacuate instead. Even after they’d flown away without her, his heart still screamed to go back. He had begged Lady Sumia to turn around, insisting that his mother was still alive down there and that they could still save her, but she had kept her eyes to the sky. He had glared at the mousy curls streaming from the back of her head and seethed hatred for her. It didn’t matter that his mother had ordered her to leave her behind, and it didn’t matter that Sumia had protested. All that mattered was that she had flown Inigo away from the person he loved most in the world when she needed him. 

He should have gotten onto the wyvern’s back with Lucina, Owain, and Lady Cherche. That would have given his mother time to mount Lady Sumia’s pegasus herself instead of helping him up onto it. If she had done that then she wouldn’t have been attacked from behind by Risen while Inigo scrambled onto the pegasus. She wouldn’t have stayed behind to fight them off alone to give them time to escape. Inigo wouldn’t have watched a horde of undead warriors swarm his maimed mother from the back of a steed that was quickly leaving her to die. And he wouldn’t be clutching this wedding ring now because he wouldn’t have pulled it off his mother’s hand trying to drag her up onto the pegasus’s back. 

“Hey, Inigo?” said a girl’s voice, and Inigo startled like a bell had suddenly been struck next to his ear. He looked up through bleary eyes and saw Cynthia above him, leaning down with her hands on her knees and a worried smile on her face. “I didn’t know you were sitting here by yourself. Are you okay?”

The prince looked down at his clenched hands and said nothing. A few moments passed and Cynthia sat down next to him. “My mother told me before she left to find you that you needed to come here with us instead of to the royal safehouse, since Ylisstol fell to Grima and he knows where it is now. So if you’re worried about getting attacked again, you’re a lot safer here than you would have been there.”

Inigo didn’t make any acknowledgment that she had spoken at all, still staring intently downwards. 

“I heard that Lucina and Owain are all healed up now,” Cynthia said gently. “Lucy is going to sleep in a room with me and Severa, but I think Owain is staying in the medical wing for the night.”

More silence passed. Soldiers hurried by carrying crates, scrolls, stacks of food and supplies. Some of them nodded at the two of them as they passed, but most of them kept their gaze forward.

“...I’m sorry about your mom,” Cynthia said in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. 

Inigo sniffled and tears finally welled up in his eyes. “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy cannoli I FINALLY got this chapter out of the way!!! It may seem like I abandoned this fic but in reality I just rewrote chapter four 87 times. I finally feel good about where it's at and I hope you all enjoy reading it! Anyways this is the last chapter before there's a timeskip so hopefully people will stop dying so much. 
> 
> Huge thank you to Rowan and Gale for beta'ing this chapter for me!! <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As he becomes increasingly frustrated by Robin's interference with his plans, Grima dives into his vessel's memories to try to understand what drives him to go to such lengths to protect his fellow humans.

The longer the Exalt’s children evaded him, the more agitated Grima became. Over the course of months he and his forces had been steadily picking off the stronger, more experienced heroes of Chrom’s army but the pace had slowed to a pathetic crawl since the first few days after Grima’s awakening. The extermination was further hindered by Robin’s unrelenting resistance; although Grima was hesitant to give the swine credit, the mental stamina he had shown up until this point was truly astounding. Grima had already tried torturing him every way that had been invented in the past few millennia, from slowly flaying his skin to forcing him to participate in the vicious and intimately personal murder of his past companions. Any one of the hells that Grima put the man through would have broken the spirits of most mortals, but they seemed to only strengthen Robin’s resolve. He knew that Grima couldn’t kill him without killing himself no matter how strongly he wished he could, and used his unique position to interfere with his plans at every opportunity. 

He had been a tactician, after all. He waged a one-man war against the fell dragon, quick to turn even the slightest advantage into ammunition against an immeasurably more powerful foe. He would make the battle last as long as he could at any expense, even if he knew he would go down fighting in the end. 

Some part of Grima couldn’t help but wonder why. Why expend so much effort, go through such unimaginable torment, just to protect such weak creatures while knowing they would die inevitably? Why continue to fight when the ones he cared for most were already unsalvageable? This unworthy worm was the only human in billions who had the chance to become a god, one that countless warrior-kings throughout history would and have waged bloody wars for, and yet he fights to get away from it like it’s a white-hot cattle brand. 

Grima had only ever reached into Robin’s memories for his own purposes; for gathering information on people, locations, and history that would be useful for perpetuating his path of destruction. But as long as they were there, ripe for the picking inside his own head, he might as well use them to sate his curiosity and understand why this creature clung to his humanity so desperately. 

\--

The first memory that Grima dragged out of the crushed corners of his vessel’s mind was an old one; it took place in a roughshod kitchen with a low ceiling and dusty counters, the edges of which a young Robin could barely reach if he stretched his arms far above his head. He hovered around a woman in a long and well-worn cotton skirt, who was tending to a hanging pot over the fire. The savory aroma of stewed fish with peas, beans, and carrots hung in the air, accompanied by the bubbling boil of rice cooking in another pot beside it. Suppertime could not have come too soon, as Robin was so famished that even Grima could feel the hunger pangs through the lens of the memory.

 

Robin looked at the woman. She had long, dark hair like his, slipping out of a bun at the nape of her neck in wide strands. Her weariness was apparent from her callused fingers to her half-lidded eyes, but she wore it like a coat over her hunched shoulders and held the boy’s waist with the patient warmth of a mother. 

Robin tugged at her skirt with urgency. “Mother, don’t fall asleep while you’re standing by the fire!” he warned. He was speaking the native tongue of Chon’sin; though he knew how to speak Ylissean and used it during the day, he always spoke his first language at home. It felt like a secret that was too safe to betray.

“Don’t worry, my darling, I’m not that sleepy,” responded the woman, even though she swayed like a reed in the breeze. “Are you tired from working in the fields today?”

Robin nodded with his fist still clenching the skirt. “I got a bunch of scratches from the leaves and I was thirsty all day. I don’t want to go tomorrow,” he said sullenly.

His mother’s eyes softened, harboring something between regret and protectiveness in their depths. “I wish you didn’t have to, darling,” she said, petting her child’s hair. “There is nothing else we can do.”

Robin scowled at the floor. “Why doesn’t my father come home and help us?” he muttered. He knew he was one of the only children in the village that did such hard work since he labored alongside the fathers of all the others. 

A shadow of hesitation passed over his mother before she brought the child into an embrace on her lap. Smiling tenderly, she said, “Your father would save us if he could, Robin. I never told you because I didn’t want to frighten you, but there was a terrible war that happened just after you were born. Your father was a hero and gave his life fighting to save innocent people. He believed that by sacrificing himself for our freedom that he was helping us; he couldn’t have known we would struggle so much without him. I know he would come for us if he could.”

As confused tears rattled young Robin’s vision, Grima was baffled into hysterics by this outlandish lie. Not only was Validar alive and well at the time of this memory, but in a few years after it he would ascend the Plegian throne and use his power not to help his fugitive family, but to execute his traitorous wife and imprison his meticulously-bred child for the next twelve years. The notion that Robin believed his father to be a martyred hero until he was viciously victimized by the man was so pathetic that Grima had to laugh. 

This memory did little to clear up the Fell Dragon’s poor understanding of his vessel’s uncommonly strong human empathy. This woman let him believe a lie for years, even when she surely had no fond feelings for Validar herself. Perhaps she was trying to protect him from the poison of hatred that must have plagued her. If only she had lived to see the glint of satisfaction in Robin’s eyes when he personally slayed Validar many years later. 

\--

The next memory started with a rock to the head. A small projectile had been flung right at Robin’s skull and he cried out in shocked pain, soothing the growing bump with his hand. Part of him wanted to just keep walking like nothing had happened - it wasn’t the first time he’d had things thrown at him and he’d learned over the years that the less he engaged with an aggressor the fewer bruises he’d end up with. But he reminded himself that he wasn’t a prisoner at Plegia castle anymore, and the Shepherds had shown him nothing but kindness so far for the few weeks he’d been with them. 

He turned around cautiously and saw a little girl running towards him with a look so apologetic it bordered on grief. “Argh, I’m so sorry, Robin! Are you alright?”

“Did you throw a rock at me?” Robin asked her timidly. He remembered this girl from the time Chrom briefly introduced him to every one of the Shepherds, but so many names had passed right through his head like thin mist that day. He squinted at her bright green mane as he tried to recall hers. 

“I didn’t mean to!” she exclaimed as Robin knelt down to pick up the glittering stone that had struck him. “I was aiming for a snake over there and I missed it by a Valmese mile and...are you trying to remember my name right now?” 

Robin blushed and nodded sheepishly. “Forgive me, I’ve met more people in the past month than everyone I’ve known in the rest of my entire life combined.”

The girl giggled, and Robin wondered if she thought he was joking. “I’m Nowi,” she said. “And I’m a thousand-year-old dragon, in case you forgot that tidbit too.” 

“You don’t look like a dragon...or a thousand years old, for that matter,” Robin said with a hand to his chin. Aside from her strangely colored features she appeared to be a perfectly regular girl. “How do I know you’re not just poking fun at the rookie?” 

Nowi huffed and rolled her eyes. “I’d be happy to transform and prove you wrong, but I left my dragonstone at my tent.”

Robin held up the stone in his fingers. “Are you sure this shiny rock isn’t it?”

Nowi tried to snatch it, but Robin lifted it out of her grasp. “Hey, that shiny rock happens to be my most treasured possession!” she said. “Give it back!”

Relenting, Robin passed it back to her. “If it’s so precious to you, why did you throw it away?”

“I told you, I was trying to hit a snake. Look, look, there it is again!” she exclaimed, pulling on Robin’s sleeve and pointing frantically at a little grass snake minding its own business a few feet away. Robin chewed his cheek for a moment, took another stone from the ground, and with a practiced flick of his wrist he smacked the poor creature with it right between its eyes, stopping it dead in its slithering tracks. 

“Oh, wowzers!” Nowi shouted with glee, bounding over to the snake and squatting to poke at its limp form. “You nailed it right in the head! That was great!” 

Robin smiled, thinking to himself that out of all his skills that would be useful to the Shepherds, he never expected that his years of pelting lizards with stones in the castle’s sandy courtyards would ever come in handy. Back then he passed the time that way because he had no one to talk to and nothing to do, and now it was a treasured skill he could share with a new friend. 

Nowi stood up and looked at him with stars in her eyes. “How did you do it? You’ve got to show me!” she demanded. 

Robin chuckled lightly and grabbed a handful of pebbles from the ground at his feet. “It’s all about focus and control,” he said seriously, and Nowi stared at him in awe like she was apprenticing a sacred art. “First, you’ll want to grip the stone like this.”

“Okay…” 

“And then just use your wrist to send it flying in the right direction, like this. Whap!”

“WHAP!” Nowi shouted, flinging her stone into the air with much enthusiasm but little finesse.

“That’s a good start, but you can do better. Remember to --”

“What are you two up to over here?” interrupted a man’s voice from behind them. Robin whipped around and straightened up, subconsciously tucking a lock of hair behind his ear. Commander Chrom was standing there in the early morning sunlight, with his hands on his hips and a casual grin on his face.

“Nothing of import, my lord,” Robin said a little too quickly, trying not to betray his shame that the commander found him out here goofing off instead of working diligently on maps and scouts’ reports.

Chrom chuckled and squeezed Robin’s shoulder. “Please, Robin, for the hundredth time...I’d like you to just call me Chrom.” 

\--

In the third memory Robin was crouching alone in the dark on the edge of camp, curled in on himself with his hood over his face. His knuckles were colorless, half because of the frigid Valmese rain falling all around him and half because of how tightly he was hugging himself. He rocked back and forth slightly as tears curled down his cheeks, his eyes wide open and staring blankly at the raindrops splashing into puddles. 

“Is that you, Robin?” 

Robin cringed involuntarily at the voice and made no response; he felt he couldn’t speak even if he wanted to. His jaw was clenched shut and would not let any words past. He sat still, footsteps splashing gently behind him until Chrom knelt down in the mud at his side.

“You scared the camp half to death when you didn’t show at dinner and you weren’t in any of your usual hideouts. Why are you sitting in the rain all the way out here?” Chrom asked, looking at Robin even though the hood was a wide visual barrier. 

Robin wanted to say something, to dismiss his worries, to assure him everything was fine, but the words would not form. He couldn’t even acknowledge that he’d heard him speak. 

Chrom hummed. “You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, but will you please at least come out of the rain? Let’s get you into some dry clothes and sit you in front of a fire so you don’t get sick.” He stood and gripped Robin’s shoulder with a strong but warm hand and tried to pull him to his feet, but Robin jerked his arm away. The motion seemed to unlock his jaw and let him speak again.

“I’m sorry for causing concern,” he said in a low voice, and Chrom sat back down beside him. “I thought that not telling anyone would make it easier for me to leave.”

“Leave?” Chrom said, with as much disbelief as if Robin had just told him he’d seen a fish grow legs and walk right out of the water. “Wh-- Wait. Leave leave? Leave-and-not-come-back leave?”

Robin sighed, trying to steady his quaking breaths. “I was planning on desertion, yes.” 

“Whatever for?” Chrom demanded, flabbergasted. “Is anyone in the Shepherds making you feel unwelcome? Because I can easily resolve that if I just spoke with th--”

“It’s not that,” Robin interrupted. Everyone had been unwaveringly compassionate toward him from day one. If he had known five years ago that he would soon be surrounded by dozens of people who only wanted to see him smile, it would have given him enough hope and strength to try and escape Plegia castle on his own and seek out that better life. They were the reason he broke down at the edge of the camp instead of walking away. “No, everyone has made me feel perfectly at home.”

“Then why? Tell me what’s driving you away, Robin, and we can fix it together. There’s no need for you to go.”

Gods, that tenderness melted all of Robin’s resolve as easily as if it was just a child’s tantrum. He wanted to take the hand that the Exalt was offering him, to believe that he had the power to solve his problems as strongly as Chrom himself did. To see himself as the capable, loyal comrade that everyone thought he was. 

“There’s nothing you can do,” Robin said. “It’s just wrong for me to be here. You don’t know who I really am.”

“Of course I do,” Chrom said with no hesitation. “You’re a brilliant strategist, a reliable friend, and a strong fighter. You love to eat stuffed mushrooms and you have a hilarious dry wit. It doesn’t bother anyone that you’re Validar’s heir. You are yourself, before you are any man’s son.”

If only it were that simple. “You don’t understand. I still haven’t told you…” Robin sighed. “Didn’t it strike you as strange that my father had me locked up and hidden away? Didn’t that seem as beyond the norm for protecting his son?” 

Chrom shrugged. “Well, I suppose. But it’s not as though Validar is a normal man. He is cruel and cold.”

Robin bit his lip. It was so tempting to tell him everything, to just have a friend who knew. But it was far more logical and less dangerous to walk away before saying another word. Staying with Chrom’s army while staying silent about his secret was foolish and almost villainous - he knew that the Grimleal were searching for him, and remaining complacently in the Shepherds would only draw their full force on top of the hostile Valmese army. But if he told Chrom now, he risked his rejection. It would be easier to leave knowing that somewhere in the world there was still someone who thought fondly of him, rather than being thrown out as a monster and a threat. 

Robin felt his hood being drawn back from his head and looked to see Chrom staring at him with worry. He seemed very close to his face, and it made Robin’s heart jump. “Please tell me what’s wrong,” said the Exalt. “I promise I can help.” 

The raw emotion in his pale grey eyes shattered his inhibitions and made him feel safe. One look at that beautiful, unabashedly kind face made all his fears seem imagined and before he could regather his senses the words were already coming out of his mouth. “Validar kept me safe and unseen so he could use me. The Grimleal have been trying for generations to breed a vessel for Grima’s resurrection...and their efforts culminated in my birth. They will stop at nothing to drag me back to Plegia so that my body can be sacrificed to the Fell Dragon.” He paused and looked down at his marked hand. “Just by existing I am dangerous. I cannot repay everything you have done for me by luring the wrath of the Grimleal to the Shepherds. I...I have to leave you. I’m sorry.”

His hands were seized by Chrom’s and held close to his chest. “And put yourself at risk for recapture? Absolutely not! Robin, the Shepherds are stronger than you must think and we care for you more than you know. We’re not afraid of some sinister cultists, and every one of us would fight to keep you out of their reach. I will protect you personally before I’d let that bastard Validar touch you ever again.”

For once in his life, Robin was at a loss for words. He searched for something to say, a way to tell Chrom his devotion was senseless, a way to thank him, but only tears answered. He leaned his forehead onto Chrom’s shoulder and clung to his hands as the rain poured down around them.

\--

Grima released the memory as though he were throwing stripped bones onto a fire. There was no need to see any more; he had found his answer. 

“Now I understand,” he said aloud. “The reason you’re so devoted to these mortals. You were in love with that man.” He spat the word love as though he had tasted something rotten. 

The voice of his vessel was uncharacteristically quiet in response.

“You’re still trying to save them like he thought you could!” Grima cackled with relish, delighting in the knowledge that the force behind Robin’s persistent willpower was something so feeble. “You are stupid, just like him. You think your love can protect anybody, when all it did for him was drive a thunderbolt through his heart? Hah!” 

Robin was silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey nobody died in this chapter! 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has left kudos and comments and who bookmarked this fic!! It's what keeps me working on such a difficult project!!

**Author's Note:**

> first multi-chapter planned fic give it up!! I've got a whole timeline planned out re: what would happen if neither Grima or Lucina were there to interfere with the goings-on. Questions and comments are welcome in the comments section! :)
> 
> Also this fic does feature a custom male Robin whom I love with all my heart. If the description's not enough and ya gotta know what he looks like, here's a lil portrait by yours truly: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CpQlMJmXEAAD71_.jpg
> 
> Thanks to my friend Mir for helping me edit! [heart emoji]


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